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Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

Roku is an extremely US-centric device, to the point that it's almost impossible to set up properly unless you are in the US.

I had to use a proxy and fake a US mailing-address to be allowed to use Spotify (a European service!), from Europe. And I had to try 3-4 times, with different email-addresses, because I had to create new accounts.

This thing took a reasonably seasoned hacker some serious effort to set up. I'm not buying a single device from this company ever again.

Compare that to Chromecasts: You can give those to grandmas and they'll just work.

My guess is if you compare global numbers to US-only numbers you will get very different results, and you will find Roku having almost no marketshare what so ever outside US-borders.

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> Chromecasts: You can give those to grandmas and they'll just work.

Having tried to train several "grandmas" on streaming media, Roku absolutely trumps chromecast for ease of use. They can understand an on screen interface and a remote. The paradigm shift of using a mobile device or a computer to drive the TV is a pretty big leap. And that is assuming they understand how to use the mobile device itself. That assuming they even have eyes that can see the phone screen, distinguish the very subtle visual elements and the dexterity to tap the little icons.

For a bit of perspective. The Chromecast used to be an absolute pain to get working. When they launched, they specifically locked it down to be US only, by forcing it to Google's DNS and do a check against that

Enterprising hackers quickly found that you could simply blackhole Google DNS and it'd use your local one, which would remove the baked in "hardware geoblocking" as it was termed

Within the first year of the Chromecast release I was using it without any issue outside the US. So I am assuming Google fixed this "quickly".

I use Roku in Greece and it's been a pretty good experience.

It's not Roku that makes you jump through all those hoops for spotify, but spotify itself.

https://support.spotify.com/us/listen_everywhere/on_tv/roku/

> Compare that to Chromecasts: You can give those to grandmas and they'll just work.

Unless you happen to have one of the many different wireless routers that Chromecasts just refuse to see.

My experience might differ, but I always use wired networking for anything which is supposed to handle media-streaming. That includes the chromecast.

My patience is way past relying on wireless for such tasks.

For what it's worth, the Roku is available in Australia, along with localized services.

It's been rebranded and only available through the dominant telco, but it's certainly available (and better for grannies in my experience): https://www.telstra.com.au/tv-movies-music/telstra-tv

I'm in the UK and I haven't experienced those sorts of issues. Maybe I've just been lucky with what I've signed up for, but I think it would be unfortunate to paint a really good product (IMHO) as bad unnecessarily.

The only issue I have is that, in the UK, you can't preload Amazon movies via the web for watching later, but that's an Amazon thing AIUI not Roku.

The author might not be from UK (he just said "Europe") so his experience might be completely different from yours.

I've met a fair share of devices who simply refuse to work in continental EU while still demanding registration to US streaming services. Stupid issues like not being able to update Spotify app on Android (due to Play Store geoblocking) while the app demands update (and works after manually applying it).

As someone from the UK you probably didn't have to assemble your own power-supply either? (Yes I had to, because it shipped a US power supply only)

Spotify was just one of many examples which for me solidified the impression that this device was purely made for the US market.

I just bought my first ever Chromecast cast (I live in BG) and it works flawlessly.

The only thing that saddens me is why it took me so long to buy one. The chromecast is brilliant.

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